Geert Wilders' Badge of Honor

Ban New Rioters--Not Old Rights

"Dear friends,

I still cannot believe it, but I have just been convicted. Because I asked a question about Moroccans. While the day before yesterday, scores of Moroccan asylum-seekers terrorized buses in Emmen and did not even had to pay a fine, a politician who asks a question about fewer Moroccans is sentenced.

The Netherlands have become a sick country. And I have a message for the judges who convicted me: You have restricted the freedom of speech of millions of Dutch and hence convicted everyone. No one trusts you anymore. But fortunately, truth and liberty are stronger than you. And so am I.

I will never be silent. You will not be able to stop me. And you are wrong, too. Moroccans are not a race, and people who criticize Moroccans are not racists. I am not a racist and neither are my voters. This sentence proves that you judges are completely out of touch.

And I have also a message for Prime Minister Rutte and the rest of the multicultural elite: You will not succeed in silencing me and defeating the PVV. Support for the Party for Freedom is stronger than ever, and keeps growing every day. The Dutch want their country back and cherish their freedom. It will not be possible to put the genie of positive change back in the bottle.

And to people at home I say: Freedom of speech is our pride. And this will remain so. For centuries, we Dutch have been speaking the unvarnished truth. Free speech is our most important possession. We will never let them take away our freedom of speech. Because the flame of freedom burns within us and cannot be extinguished.".......

Read it all at John Bolton's house.

Mark Steyn, earlier this year:

"And oddly enough no matter how explicit the threats of violence and death are from Islamic supremacists they never attract the attention of supposed "anti-hate" laws like Section 13 and 18C, or "tolerance" police like the Australian "Human Rights" Commission.

Instead, when the state ideology is boundless "tolerance", it somehow winds up becoming mercilessly but highly selectively intolerant. Douglas Murray again, this time on the Netherlands:

On Monday of this week the latest trial of Geert Wilders got underway in Holland. This time Wilders is being tried because of a statement at a rally in front of his supporters in March 2014. Ahead of municipal elections, and following reports of a disproportionate amount of crimes being committed in Holland by Muslims of Moroccan origin, Wilders asked a crowd, "Do you want more or fewer Moroccans in this city and in the Netherlands?" The audience responded, "Fewer, fewer." To which Wilders responded, "Well, we'll arrange that, then..."
The long-term implications for Dutch democracy of criminalizing a majority opinion are catastrophic. But the trial of Wilders is also a nakedly political move.
Whether or not one feels any support for Wilders's sentiments is not in fact the point in this case. The point is that by prosecuting someone for saying what he said, the courts in Holland are effectively ruling that there is only one correct answer to the question Wilders asked. They are saying that if someone asks you whether you would like more Moroccans or fewer, people must always answer "more," or they will be committing a crime.

There are more and more areas of debate in which the authorities take the view that "there is only one correct answer". A free people should be free to argue, whether they take the right side or the wrong side of the question. But, as I always say (he says wearily), when you're arguing that only one side is allowed to have a side, you're on the wrong side.".......

Andrew Stuttaford, on Wilders' rising poll numbers, recalling: "When I interviewed Wilders for NRODT more than a decade ago, he was living in a prison. That was thought to be the safest place for him after the murders of politician Pim Fortuyn and the filmmaker Theo van Gogh. It struck me then that Wilders’ position on Islam (and Islamic immigration) was, like van Gogh’s and Fortuyn’s, rooted in concern over the threat that Islamism represented to traditional Dutch freedoms.".......